For a guy who spent most of his years writing, performing, programming, and living in apartments with no yard, I ended up having what may have been the most chest-beating, outdoorsman-type weekend of my life.
On Saturday, I spent a chunk of the day attacking that huge wood pile with a chainsaw. (Yes, I’m the guy who used to be afraid of chainsaws.) It’s slow going, but the plan is to cut up a log or two each weekend until the job is done.
In the early evening, Chareva and I went out back and test-fired her new 20-gauge shotgun several times – which I guess makes it a chest-beating weekend for her too. I shot my 12-gauge as well to compare the recoil. I think Chareva could handle the 12-gauge in a pinch, but I wanted her to have something more manageable.
When I first fired my 12-gauge a few months ago, I made the mistake of holding it like I hold my rifle; i.e., just sort of resting against my shoulder. Ouch. I had a bruise for three days. I’ve since learned to hold a shotgun tight against my shoulder so the recoil produces a shove, not a punch. The plan is to take up turkey hunting later this year, since we get plenty of wild turkeys in these parts. I may go for a deer at some point as well.
On Sunday, I attacked the jungle around the property both with the chainsaw (for the really thick bushes) and with the blade attachment on the Weed-Whacker (thus giving myself another opportunity to lose an appendage). Yes, I’ve cleared the jungle before, but I came to a startling realization lesson this summer: jungles grow back. In fact, they’re relentless. With Jimmy Moore coming to town and a hundred or so rounds of disc golf on the schedule, the jungle had to go — again. Hunting for a bad shot in the overgrowth is a good way to pick up chiggers or ticks.
Speaking of insects that bite, I finally learned why they love me so darned much. And I mean it: I attract them like models attract professional athletes. Chareva and I will go to sleep, and I’ll wake up with a dozen spider bites, while she’ll have one or (more likely) none. Same thing with mosquitoes when we both work outside.
Chareva’s theory was that biting insects find me delicious. My theory was that they don’t bite her because she’s nice. (Naw, leave the nice lady alone, guys. Let’s go bite the sarcastic bastard next to her.) Turns out her theory was probably correct:
Roughly 20 percent of people are more frequent meal tickets for mosquitoes than the rest of the population, and Smithsonian Magazine set out to investigate: Why?
Beer drinkers beware. Mosquitoes love the brew.
Just a single 12-ounce bottle of beer can make you more attractive to the insects, one study found. But even though researchers had suspected this was because drinking increases the amount of ethanol excreted in sweat, or because it increases body temperature, neither of these factors were found to correlate with mosquito landings, making their affinity for drinkers something of a mystery.
No, this isn’t about me drinking beer. I rarely drink beer anymore. I drank way too much beer in my young and stupid days, but I doubt I’m still seeping the stuff from my pores. Let’s read on:
The pests also like Type O blood twice as much as Type A. And they’re attracted to high levels of carbon dioxide and can smell the gas from 164 feet away. That means those with larger frames and bigger bodies are more at risk for bites.
Bingo. I have type O blood. Chareva has type A blood. I also have a bigger body by about 70 pounds. Mosquitoes do find me more delicious. Based on my track record, so do spiders. And chiggers. And ticks.
The garden isn’t providing a whole lot of food yet, but we’ve had a bumper crop of Swiss chard. Man, that’s good stuff. Chareva chops it up and sautés it in olive oil and garlic, or with chopped bacon. We’ve also had some green beans and sugar-snap peas. Foods from a grocery store don’t come anywhere close for flavor.
I’ve strapped my trail camera to a tree behind the house a few times in hopes of figuring out what makes the dogs occasionally bark like crazy in the middle of the night. I guess it might be this:
For the past couple of weeks, however, the dogs have been focused on trying to find a way into the rest of the house so they can pay a visit (friendly or not … too soon to tell) to our newest addition:
The kitty’s name (after much debate and negotiation between the girls) is Rascal. I’m not a cat-lover and had no intention of ever getting one, but some idiot stranger forced me to capitulate.
A few weeks ago, Chareva saw someone in a pickup stop halfway down our long driveway, sit there for a minute, then drive away. She thought that was odd, of course. Then we noticed we had a kitten hanging around our house. Okay, now it made sense. Someone apparently bought into the “drop your unwanted pets at the nearest farm and all will be well” idea.
All wasn’t well. The girls were of course immediately smitten, but within a week the kitten became listless, stopped eating and drinking, and seemed on the verge of death. Our local vet took a look and said if we wanted to spend several hundred dollars on tests, he might be able to figure out what was wrong … but his guess was that the kitten was going to die anyway. It hadn’t been cared for, hadn’t had any shots, and was riddled with ticks when we found it.
So Chareva and I had to sit the girls down and explain that was it best to put the kitten to sleep. Chareva drove the grief-stricken girls back to the vet’s at their insistence so they could say goodbye to the kitten. Then she came home and dug a grave, in tears. She was never a cat person either, but after days of holding the kitten and trying to feed it with a syringe, she’d bonded with it.
The sort-of-happy ending is that the vet’s nurse decided to take the kitten home and try to save it, since she’d been wanting a cat anyway. At least we could tell the girls (after hours of weeping) that the kitten wasn’t going to be put down. But before the sort-of-happy ending, Chareva had promised the grieving girls that we’d get them another kitten.
That’s how Rascal ended up being their new pet. By the time I came home from work the next day, they’d already picked him up from a shelter.
So some idiot stranger traumatized my girls, left with me a vet bill, and pushed me into owning a cat – all because he thought it would be a good idea to dump his unwanted pet on our land. Thanks, moron.
Rascal is a mellow little dude and seems to like me. He demonstrates his affection by pouncing on my shoulder late at night when I’m watching TV alone in the dark and have forgotten we own a cat. Then he helpfully slurps up the drink that tumbles out of my hand when I jump halfway out of my chair with what’s left of my hair standing up. I guess he doesn’t want those chest-beating weekends to give me a big macho ego. Getting the poop scared out of you by a kitten certainly provides a dose of humility.
On another farm somewhere in Illinois, my future dinner is growing up nicely on a diet of grass, as Mother Nature intended. The Older Brother sent a picture:
Jimmy and Christine Moore will arrive on Thursday. I’ll keep up with comments, but may or may not write any posts during their visit.
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Regarding the turkeys…
I’m sure you’re aware that the wild turkey is going to be very very different in “structure” than the genetic freaks people buy in the grocery store. Those are primarily “Giant Breasted Whites”, and have been bred specifically to that end, to the point where they aren’t capable of walking, let alone flight.
The wild turkey is going to have a larger percentage of dark meat, and much smaller breasts. If you compared the two, resting in roasting pans, the Giant White will have a plump, rounded shape leading up to the breast bone, while the wild will be very angular, with much less breast meat.
Because of this, you need to cook them a bit differently…namely starting the roasting upside down. Place the bird breast-down in the roasting rack, for the first 2hrs, then flip it so the breast is up for the remainder of roasting.
Otherwise, you’ll get a bird with very dry, stringy breast meat.
The flavor will also be VERY different. When we raised our heritage turkeys, the flavor was MUCH more intense. It made store bought birds taste almost watered down…while the heritage birds had a very rich flavor. That’s just one of the reasons that Martha Stuart recommends them…even though they’re much more expensive. If you’re having friends and family over for a holiday celebration, you don’t buy the least expensive, tough, stringy piece of beef you can find. You buy a nice cut of meat. Same should be true of turkeys.
Jim
I appreciate the advice.
Walk? Our grocery store turkeys can’t even mate and have to be propegated by artificial insemination. Some things are just *WRONG*.
Two words: Laser Pointer.
You will never be board again!
Eric
We live in North Idaho, next to state forrest land. At night we can hear the coyotes talking to each other. We make sure our cats are all safely indoors, well before nightfall. We had one unlucky chap that wouldn’t come in at the appointed time and he became someones dinner. 🙁 Quite a few of the neighbors cats have gone missing too.
We’ve already lost a bunch of guinea fowl and a rooster to the coyotes. Rascal will not be outside at night.
My cat – which was dumped on me by an ex girlfriend – is soon turning 15. A few years ago, I also acquired a Beauceron dog (the ancestor of the Rottweiler) and named him Eliott (for no particular reasons).
Well, they were best friends, and the cat was ‘The Boss’ and never afraid to demonstrate it, even though the dog was close to 120 Lbs of pure muscle.
One of my best memories is the two of them sitting side by side one sunny morning inspecting the garden, their tails aligned.
And the dog was so protective… no other cats were allowed in the garden. Sadly Eliott passed away after a car accident, and the cat was depressed for the next six months and lost most of the hair on his legs and belly.
Time has passed and he’s now fine. Cats and dogs can be best friends, as long as the dog(s) realize that the cat(s) are part of the ‘pack’.
Oh, and dogs beleive they have masters, cats are convinced they have staff…..
We live in North Idaho, next to state forrest land. At night we can hear the coyotes talking to each other. We make sure our cats are all safely indoors, well before nightfall. We had one unlucky chap that wouldn’t come in at the appointed time and he became someones dinner. 🙁 Quite a few of the neighbors cats have gone missing too.
We’ve already lost a bunch of guinea fowl and a rooster to the coyotes. Rascal will not be outside at night.
My cat – which was dumped on me by an ex girlfriend – is soon turning 15. A few years ago, I also acquired a Beauceron dog (the ancestor of the Rottweiler) and named him Eliott (for no particular reasons).
Well, they were best friends, and the cat was ‘The Boss’ and never afraid to demonstrate it, even though the dog was close to 120 Lbs of pure muscle.
One of my best memories is the two of them sitting side by side one sunny morning inspecting the garden, their tails aligned.
And the dog was so protective… no other cats were allowed in the garden. Sadly Eliott passed away after a car accident, and the cat was depressed for the next six months and lost most of the hair on his legs and belly.
Time has passed and he’s now fine. Cats and dogs can be best friends, as long as the dog(s) realize that the cat(s) are part of the ‘pack’.
Oh, and dogs beleive they have masters, cats are convinced they have staff…..
Is there such a thing as a vegan mosquito?
The thought of Tom Naughton with a chainsaw, frightens me.
It still scares me a bit too. That’s probably to my benefit.
Is there such a thing as a vegan mosquito?
The thought of Tom Naughton with a chainsaw, frightens me.
It still scares me a bit too. That’s probably to my benefit.
I have noticed fewer insect bites (even from the fleas our cats bring in) over the past two years since I have been eating a VLC ketogenic diet. I wonder sometimes if the ketones aren’t part of the reason why. I do seem to tend to waste some of them through my skin and urine, and maybe it serves as an insect repellant? Who knows.
Oh, and a great discovery I made a few months ago. The first time I saw chard in a store, I bought a little plastic bag of it, took it home, and ate it — raw. Ew! So I have cooked it ever since, as I have done with kale and collard greens since long before I discovered chard.
Until recently. I still cook them when I do, but I have found that if I simply chop a mixture of these industrial-strength greens into small enough pieces then they are quite good eaten raw, especially when mixed with other raw veggies (and aged hard goat cheese) and tossed with oil and vinegar. So now I have cooked for breakfast and raw for lunch. After that, who needs dinner?
I have noticed fewer insect bites (even from the fleas our cats bring in) over the past two years since I have been eating a VLC ketogenic diet. I wonder sometimes if the ketones aren’t part of the reason why. I do seem to tend to waste some of them through my skin and urine, and maybe it serves as an insect repellant? Who knows.
Oh, and a great discovery I made a few months ago. The first time I saw chard in a store, I bought a little plastic bag of it, took it home, and ate it — raw. Ew! So I have cooked it ever since, as I have done with kale and collard greens since long before I discovered chard.
Until recently. I still cook them when I do, but I have found that if I simply chop a mixture of these industrial-strength greens into small enough pieces then they are quite good eaten raw, especially when mixed with other raw veggies (and aged hard goat cheese) and tossed with oil and vinegar. So now I have cooked for breakfast and raw for lunch. After that, who needs dinner?
I bought a 12 gauge semi auto shot gun and it has very little recoil. The recoil is taken up in the reloading mechanism. It also helps you stay on shot for a second right away if you need it. If you happen to be interested email me and I can tell you the make and model. It is such a pleasure to shoot and everyone who has ever tried it out at the range loved it. Chareva would have no problem with it. It wasn’t expensive either. It is the economy line of a very fancy shot gun maker and it has the same internal design people pay three times as much for. A beautiful gun. I use it for skeet and trap shooting. My good friend has a 20 gauge single shot that has three times the recoil of this 12 gauge semi auto.
I won’t likely buy another 12-gauge, but sure, I wouldn’t mind knowing about it.
I bought a 12 gauge semi auto shot gun and it has very little recoil. The recoil is taken up in the reloading mechanism. It also helps you stay on shot for a second right away if you need it. If you happen to be interested email me and I can tell you the make and model. It is such a pleasure to shoot and everyone who has ever tried it out at the range loved it. Chareva would have no problem with it. It wasn’t expensive either. It is the economy line of a very fancy shot gun maker and it has the same internal design people pay three times as much for. A beautiful gun. I use it for skeet and trap shooting. My good friend has a 20 gauge single shot that has three times the recoil of this 12 gauge semi auto.
I won’t likely buy another 12-gauge, but sure, I wouldn’t mind knowing about it.
You are not a cat person because you have never had occasion to be owned by one. There’s a huge difference between Someone Else’s Cat and Your Own Cat. All those stories about cats being unfriendly and solitary and snobby? Do not apply if they see you as family.
Trust. You and Rascal will get along great if you give it time.
We already get along great. He’s developed a habit of taking naps in my lap while I work.
You are not a cat person because you have never had occasion to be owned by one. There’s a huge difference between Someone Else’s Cat and Your Own Cat. All those stories about cats being unfriendly and solitary and snobby? Do not apply if they see you as family.
Trust. You and Rascal will get along great if you give it time.
We already get along great. He’s developed a habit of taking naps in my lap while I work.